Thoughts On The Movie: Moon

“250,000 miles from home, the hardest thing to face… is yourself”

We recently watched the 2009 Sam Rockwell movie, Moon, on DVD, and what a ride it was. From time to time we get through a movie on DVD only to wish we had gotten around to watching at the cinema – some films just beg to be watched on the big screen.

Lasting just over 90 minutes the story, of Moon, follows Astronaut Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) who is finishing up his last few weeks on a three year mission mining the dark side of the moon for Helium-3, Earth’s primary source of energy, – with only Gerty (voiced admirably by Kevin Spacey), the moon base computer system, as his companion and caretaker.

We join Sam as he is really feeling the strain of the last few weeks of the mission – waiting for the ride home to be reunited his wife and daughter. Shortly into the movie Sam starts getting flashes of images, which affect his concentration, which ultimately leads to an accident, however he is rescued by … himself. Confusion, distrust, anger and curiosity ensue and we follow the two Sam’s as they try to come to terms with what is happening to them, and around them, and uncover a mystery neither of them really want to find.

Combining, and paying a nod to, elements of science fiction classics including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Alien, Outland, Dark Star, Wall-E and Silent Running – the movie Moon somehow manages to bring something new to the genre. Particular nods would be the computer, GERTY 3000, striking a similar feel in tone to HAL 9000 from 2001 (and the ship computer from Wall-E), there is also a set piece tuned to a classical music track which has a similar 2001 feel.

There are some curiosities about the movie which we didn’t quite get:

• Why did Sam #2 put Sam #1 back in the Rover?
• Why did Sam #2 bother rebooting Gerty – if he already planned to destroy the communication tower?
• There seemed to be quite a bit of gravity on the moon and in the moon base.
• Why are there so many moon rovers (and space suits) for just one astronaut (we counted at least three)
• Why are the other Sam’s in the storage area all fully grown?
• What was the cause of Sam’s initial hallucination of seeing a girl sitting in the chair?
• How come Sam had never played through the previous recordings – why were they kept at all?

A deeply reflective piece, Moon, has high re-watch value which makes it a movie to add to the science fiction classics collection. Let’s see if it stands the test of time.